I'm an atheist and I still think porn may be a valueless, happiness destroying exploitation of the way the human brain works in a way that makes zynga appear to be an angel of virtue. The less of it there is, the better.
Fix that and porn and prostitution take their legitimate place in a balanced society.
In fact I encounter a lot of people discussing sex ad nauseum in the US, especially women.
ETA: Gender disparity in willingness to discuss sex in the US at least in the workforce may have to do with sexual harassment laws and company policies, which didn't come from the religious establishment.
Cindy thinks that the restrictions that policies place on sex-oriented companies like hers are tantamount to wanting to “pretend sex doesn’t exist.”
Actually, that's precisely what companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft aren't doing. Not wanting to be exposed to porn does not mean you think sex doesn't exist. It is an illogical and simplistic equivalence.
As for the charge that American government is "influenced by religion", why single out the USA? All world governments are influenced by religious principles of some kind. Codified law systems spring from religion. It's why the law makes a moral judgement about murder, or speeding (to use a less severe crime as an example).
"Religion", rightly understood, does not paint sex as "dirty." It places sex within the boundaries of a moral, social and legal code. The Puritans were actually some of the most lusty, sex affirming (within marriage) people of their time.
I don't think China or Russia are for example.
> Codified law systems spring from religion. It's why the law makes a moral judgement about murder, or speeding (to use a less severe crime as an example).
You don't need religion to make such moral judgements.
We have an absolutely horrifying clerical renaissance here in Russia. Church gets a lot of media attention, a lot of general public attention, a lot of lawmakers' attention. By recent polls, 75% of Russians consider themselves orthodox christians.
Just two examples of how this influences everyday life:
1. There is a university called MIFI (aka National Research Nuclear University Moscow Engineering Physics Institute). For a long time there was a statue of a wayfarer on their campus with the following words "Дорогу осилит идущий" (I don't know English equivalent, literally: "The one who walks will overcome the path"). This statue, nicknamed "An Eternal Student", was considered an unofficial symbol and words an unofficial motto of MIFI students. However, right before patriarch Kirill visit to the institution, statue was replaced by a cross.
Before and after pic: http://ic.pics.livejournal.com/statixaos/16015392/2819/origi...
Also, later they announced they were opening a theological faculty there. In a nuclear research university.
2. A road accident happened in Moscow. Drunk hieromonk Ilia was driving a Mercedes G-wagon (!) at 140 kmph and crashed into a Skoda. Afterwards he crashed into three road workers, two of whom died. Putting aside how monk can own and drive expensive cars, mysterious things began to occur to this case. For some reason, no one bothered to take his blood sample or arrest the young monk, who was taken by (allegedly) unknown person home. In the court a person, who wasn't even present at the crash, told the judge that it was Skoda that crashed into and killed road workers. Video records from the case showing Mercedes were, wait for it, "destroyed by a computer virus". For no apparent reason, after all this Ilia decided to confess to everything.
Also, the case of pussy riot, who were given prison time for disorderly conduct and many, many different annoying things.
PS: If you actually look at history religions where codified well after laws became common.
Some values I see for porn:
1) reduces the number of sexual assaults (because horny people have an easy "out") (what supposedly happened after the fall of Soviet Union, after which porn became legal in the eastern block) 2) enables lonely people or others who don't seek companionship an easier way of sexual release 3) historical value: record yourself when you're young, so you can easier remember your sexual joys when you're older.
Correlation and Causation and all but this one is going to be really hard to prove.
At least everyone can be happy about sex crime rates going down.
Classifying something as porn or obscene is a personal decision that each individual makes.
However, an easily overlooked aspect of porn is that it canalizes and binds a lot of "useless" energy. A few years ago I heard this tongue-in-cheek hypothesis about male sexuality: Once they manage to reliably eliminate all porn, it will take two days before mobs with clubs and pitchforks roam the streets making political demands.
There seem to be some people trying to collect data about the correlation between availability of pornography and the level of some crimes, but I'm still waiting for something conclusive.
Not that it's easy. Quantitative sociology is, due to the interconnectedness of the system in question, a mess.
But then, there are lots of "indie" pornsites (such as Girls out West and their ilk; NSFW). There are some interesting interviews with the "indie" pornstar named "Furry Girl"; tldr is that she is there by choice.
This example is not to diminish what sounds like widespread exploitation in many other parts of the porn world. Rather it is to say that porn is not synonymous with exploitation.
This implies that men are unable to control their sexual urges or that men are inherently rapists when porn is unavailable, both of those ideas are patently offensive to people in general. Please don't contribute to rape culture stereotypes about men.
If you say that I'm completely off the mark, then let me ask you this: Would you not agree that male teenagers are incredibly angsty and hyped about all things "sex"? Don't you also experience a certain period of incredibly relaxing calm after sex?
Male sexuality has a tension-release aspect to it. Nobody is talking about rape here. If you take a bunch of young males, lock them in together and restrict their access to porn, they will become tense to the point of aggressiveness, mostly against each other. One example would be the interpersonal stuff that goes down in the training phase of military service (not talking about instructors).
Do you mean that factually, as in "every business is by nature exploitative, thus so is porn industry", or rhetorically, as in "porn industry is more exploitative than most other industries"?
If second, care to elaborate?
I kind of cling to that one story, because it answers a question that I've had for a long time. Given that you're prostitution is not your dream job and that it is generally shunned by society, how does one become a prostitute?
For simplicity of the argument, I've assumed that the professions of pornographic performer and prostitute are mostly similar.
I presume you feel the same way about the female equivalent of porn, romance novels, eh?
If the main idea is crap, then there's no "art" that can save it. That's like saying "there can be artful snuff films".
>I presume you feel the same way about the female equivalent of porn, romance novels, eh?
100%. Also for action movies, and a lot of sub-par crap that people are served.
hang on, sir/madam. who the hell are you to judge what is art and what is not? perhaps you would like to be in the censorship and regulation department that will decide whether or not something is art and whether or not something is of "value"? how do you decide whether something has "value"? the amount of smugness is quite astonishing. what "value" do you create? why do you exist?
I'm a European. We're not very populist in this here parts. We are judgemental, and we have standards.
They might be flexible, human created standards, that not everybody agrees with, but they are standards nonetheless. Society never knew any other kind of standards, anyway.
E.g we do get to judge that eating Nachos and watching BS TV serials for hours on end is "living like a pig".
>perhaps you would like to be in the censorship and regulation department that will decide whether or not something is art and whether or not something is of "value"?
No need. That's also what critics and cultures do.
You, for example, have adopted wholesale the idea of YOUR culture, that everything is just as good, and it's all a matter of personal taste.
Which is as much a value judgement as any other.
You mean, porn?
Hookup apps and dildonics are not porn.
You state that "porn may be a valueless, happiness destroying exploitation of the way the human brain works". What are your reasons for saying this? Is it just your personal aversion? Or do you think it holds in general (in which case you'd at least have to provide some evidence).
By keeping innovative sexual content out of the door you let the worse objectifying non-interactive non-adaptive porn to thrive.
There's a reason we have these "archaic" views on sex, and it's more than religious dogma; although, every mainstream religion prohibits the hook-up culture these startups are advocating. In addition to the risk of disease, we seem to be happiest when we treat sex as a very intimate act between people that care deeply for one another rather than simply the casual social act described by Huxley's Brave New World.
[1] http://yourbrainonporn.com